National Review Online today published Rev. Robert Sirico’s “A House Built on Sand,” his mentary on the financial crisis. Wall Street has been skewered and denounced in almost every attempt to examine the moral dimension of this crisis. Yet, Wall Street is too often denounced for all the wrong reasons — as a surrogate for the free economy, for seeking and making a profit, as though the alternative was somehow a preferable moral result. No, if we are going to...

The latest issue of Religion & Liberty contains an essay I wrote for Acton about whether the relationship between social conservatives and libertarians can be saved. A student at my university (Houston Baptist University) read the essay and formulated a number of thoughts on his own. I was so affected by what this undergraduate sent me, I had to pass it along: I have strong beliefs about limited government, states rights, individual liberty, free-markets, etc. But these e under fire...

——————– Start of message from list: eni-summary ——– Ecumenical News International News Highlights 24 November 2008 Ukrainian church marks 20th century ‘genocide’ Russia disputes Warsaw (ENI). Ukraine’s largest Orthodox church has marked the anniversary of an early 1930s’ Soviet-engineered famine, in which millions died, by describing it for the first time as an “act of genocide”, a description rejected by the Russian government. “A crime like this could only happen in an environment hateful of God and man,” the holy...

In sports, there is a debate (between interesting and inane) about the meaning of a “Most Valuable Player” award: is it the best “individual” player (often measured in terms of a handful of statistics) or the player who is most valuable to his team (without that player, the team would not be nearly as good)? The same could be said for holidays. For Christians, the “greatest” holidays are Christmas, Good Friday, and especially, Easter. But I’d argue that Thanksgiving is...

I cannot tell you how many times Catholics have used mon good” as an excuse for more government involvement in peoples’ lives and the installing of socialistic, “spread the wealth” programs. This version of mon good is the foundation for some people’s idea of distributive justice, but actually it is based on the “Robin Hood fallacy” of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. How did e to this conclusion? I did so merely by reading Aristotle and...

A General Thanksgiving. ALMIGHTY God, Father of all mercies, we, thine unworthy servants, do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all men; particularly to those who desire now to offer up their praises and thanksgivings for thy late mercies vouchsafed unto them. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all, for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world...

For something to be deemed not relevant is the kiss of death in some evangelical Christian congregations across this country. As churches try to influence culture the Church at the same time is often swallowed up by it. The Pilgrims certainly would be categorized by many as severely irrelevant in lifestyle, separatist ways, and by their manner of worship in today’s culture. The pastor of the church I attend preached an excellent two part series sermon on the Pilgrims. He...

Following up on our coverage of Pope Benedict’s economic “prophecy,” here’s a snip from yesterday’s “Papal Bullishness” editorial in Investor’s Business Daily. Read then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1985 article “Market Economy and Ethics” here. The Pope gave a “prediction that an undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules,” the ex-socialist lawyer and economics professor nonsensically claimed at Milan’s Cattolica University last week. Tremonti conveniently omitted that elsewhere in the Pontiff’s 2,300-word analysis he grumbled that Theodore Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller spread...

Appearing in the next issue of Religion & Liberty will be my review of Philip F. Lawler’s The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture (Encounter Books, 2008). There is no point in dwelling on how well-written and insightful the book is, as it has already won plaudits from other, more significant reviewers, but I can give my own “Acton spin” to Lawler’s exceptional work. Here is the piece in full, an exclusive preview for PowerBlog readers: Lord Acton’s...

Linked yesterday on the Drudge Report and picked up by news outlets all over the world is a brief Bloomberg report on a statement from the Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti. Tremonti attributed to Pope Benedict XVI a “prophecy” dating from over twenty years ago concerning the current global financial meltdown. Again, the story is quite brief, and here’s the gist: “The prediction that an undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules can be found” in an article written...